hey look at this cook off i won

This is the story of how I won a cook off. I made some pizzas. On the grill. It's either one very complicated story, or a series of not too complicated stories, depends on how you want to look at it.


The Miller Part of the Story

I will often say that I like to personify my friends with stories about them. I then qualify that by saying I'm sure personify isn't the right word, but I'm too lazy to figure out what the correct word is. It's convenient for this post that Miller has one of the better examples.

I was unemployed, which had been by choice for awhile, but morphed into me just not being able to get a job (I'm not actually very good at things). Miller was the de facto manager at Cigarette Express. I say de facto manager because it was one of those bullshit things you come across in retail jobs where they say "we're gonna give you more responsibility but no raise and no official title." Regardless, he had juice and told me that if I wanted, come in and get a job.

It was kind of a bizarre employment situation there. There was something like eighty total hours available for work each week. Miller worked thirty or so of em, this other girl worked twenty which left thirty hours between me and this other guy. The amount I'd work would vary quite a bit, but I was mainly hired specifically to bridge the gap between when Miller got off (two) and when the girl showed up (four thirty I think). This was fine until about a month after I started and decided I was gonna go back to school. Class schedule meant that one or two days a week I wasn't going to be able to cover that specific two and a half hours. This meant they would have to hire someone to work an even smaller amount of time, which, prolly wouldn't work out. I mention this because it's what I assume the reason for the next part of this story.

The next part of the story is one day I was getting ready to go into work when my boss called me.

"Hey, your drawer was fifty dollars short last night, what happened?"

I actually just laughed when he said this. Math is kind of a thing with me and when it comes to counting out drawers at a job or just handling other peoples money in general, I'm kind of anal. There was really no way I was short, so, confused, I asked what he meant.

"Fifty dollars is missing from your drawer, do you have an explanation?"

It really just seemed comical to me. I had to entertain the possibility that maybe I messed up something, so I said as much and that I was about to come in and I was sure we could figure it out when I got in.

"If you can't explain it, then don't bother coming in, you're fired." *click*

I sat there holding the phone, very literally slack jawed. I'm not going to say I never lie. I'm not going to say I never steal. But to genuinely accuse me of that, with no proof, when I was doing neither of those things, well that's about the worst insult you can give me. Then this happened.

(I'm probably embellishing the details here since I wasn't actually there)

Miller was working at the time, but hadn't been informed by the boss that he was about to make that call. After he got done Miller goes to him and says "Two things. First of all, I know him, he wouldn't do that. Second, he's smarter than you, so if he had stolen that money, you never would have caught him." Gets up and walks out. (for those taking notes, that's how you earn my loyalty for life)

Then this other time, I was unemployed (again, not so great) when Miller said he could get me on at this place, The Upper Crust. It was kind of funny, they had five employees, two of whom were managers, one was an assistant manager and then you had me and Miller who were plain old drivers. This was my first introduction to the pizza world, which was fortuitous because one of the managers was a man by the name of Rockafeller.

The Rockafeller Part of the Story.

I very deeply hate people bullshitting me. A big part of this is that people are so rarely good at it. If you're obviously lying, then the fuck is the point? Now I know whatever it is you were trying to hide but now it's doubly fucked cause you get the annoyance of the lie tacked on. I'm also not very high up on people not speaking their mind and just saying "kalmbach, you're fucking up." I would, in every instance, prefer to hear what people really think.

I, at the time, fancied this girl. We were working at the Upper Crust together and after work would often go hang out at Rockafellers afterwards. I for the life of me can't recall if there was something specific that triggered this or if it was more out of the blue, but one day he just went off on her. The jist of it was that she didn't appreciate me and she was gonna fuck this up and someday realize what a huge mistake it was. I was rendered speechless. She stormed out. Truth be told I was pretty pissed at him for that, but it didn't last long, because he was right. Especially with some 2020 hindsight, its pretty clear that if we had dated it would have been a big mistakey. Here's the thing though, I am, without question, stubborn to a fault. Even if I know something is a terrible idea, I'll often just stupidly stick it through. Sometimes I just need someone to smack me upside the head and say "come on!"

So there's that.

And then there's this.

What it comes down to is, learning to make pizza from Rockafeller is pretty much taking a master class. It's more than just learning to sauce a pizza (paint it like a picture) or the malcolm-x cut (totally got me laid that one time). The number one thing Rockafeller teaches that you just don't get elsewhere, is the love. The man has held every job in the pizza world and has managed to take all that knowledge and distill it down to one key thing. Ask him what it's all about and he'll tell you:

"The pizza dance."

I'll tell you what the pizza dance isn't, it's not a native american ritual to make it rain pizza (HA HA HA THAT'S FUNNY). The typical pizza dance story goes like this: You're delivering a pizza to someone and while standing at the door giving them their order, you see a kid in the background and they just start dancing. It's the sort of dance that has no rhyme or reason, that will never again be repeated in that exact way. It's the result of someone reaching a state of joy that they just don't know how else to communicate so their body takes over in that primal way. Delivering pizza can be a shit job sometimes and it's certainly one that earns the respect of exactly no one, but for that kid, in that moment, you have the single most important job in the world. Giving someone a beaut (beaut is a technical term for excellent pizza) and knowing that their next half hour is gonna be bliss, bringing that joy, to that kid. It's kind of beautiful.

Because I'm not actually very funny, almost every time I bake something I make the joke that the secret ingredient is love. There's a lot to be said for that here though. Does it really matter if every piece of pepperoni is positioned perfectly? Maybe not, but if you wanna earn that pizza dance, it damn well better be.

Suffice to say, after I decided I was gonna do pizza for this cook off, there was really only one person to consult. This was somewhat unfortunate because he lives in Clinton and my lifes ambition is to never go to Clinton. Alas, if I was gonna do this right, it had to be done. Much to my shock he had never grilled pizza and had no thoughts on the subject. God. Damnit. Luckily he at least had thoughts on how to make my pizza of choice (bacon cheeseburger). So I hung out for a bit and watched some tv. Then, out of nowhere, he dropped, what I believe is referred to in the industry as, a knowledge bomb.

"What if you got a pizza stone?"

*mimes an explosion*

On the one hand that seemed so obvious, on the other hand, what a revelation. It's like, "whats that michael jordan? When shooting a jump shot I should jump?" Changed the game. During my test run (more on that in a bit) the biggest issue was the crust, this solved that easy. He had one other piece of sage advice that I probably already knew, but didn't want to accept. I tend to force homemade even when there's no compelling reason to do so. As such, my plan from day one had been to make my own pizza dough. For the test run however, I got a couple balls from my dough guy. Rockafeller said I should really just stick with that dough because I know how it works and starting with dough from scratch takes a ton of experimentation to get right. Well, when Rockafeller talks about pizza, you listen, so it was back to my dough guy.

The Nate Dogg Part of the Story

I don't actually have any idea why I'm friends with nate. Or wait, shit, I already told a story about him. That was all lies. Ignore the years we lived together. Ignore the times we worked together. Ignore the gaming. Ignore him being able to put up with my mopeyness like a champ. Ignore the fact that between the two of us we can probably recite the movie Tombstone in it's entirety. That's all like, whatever, you know? I feel like if you look past all that, the guy's kind of a tool.

Hmm, seem to be a lot of holes in that story, better just cut my losses.

Once upon a time Nate Dogg needed a job so I got him on at the Upper Crust. Then this other time he needed a job so I got him on at Rosatis. He kept that job, which made him the last person I really knew in the pizza world. So I was all like "sup on that dough?" and he was all like "werd son!" True story. As mentioned above, he actually came through twice, the first was for the test run.

The DonnyK Part of the Story

I had been tasked with sorting through some resumes at work. Out of forty or so, there was exactly one that jumped out at me as being an especially good fit. The only problem is that under "convicted of a felony" he said yes. I say problem, but I didn't personally have any issues with it. I mean it certainly could be a bad thing, but I saw no reason to not give the guy a phone interview, hear his story. I pitched that to my boss and he was all like "n'op."

Really? Couldn't it have been some sort of lame felony (I don't have any idea what would qualify as a lame felony, but I was at least prepared to listen)? It just seems fundamentally absurd to pass judgement like that. If, when I applied, they had called Cigarette Express, they would have been told I got fired for stealing. That almost certainly would have knocked me out, which would be ridiculous since a) see the above story and b) I'm, by a mile, the best at my job and they woulda missed out on that because of bullshit.

Anyways I was prepared to goto bat for this guy, but I figured I may as well look up what his felony was (that sort of thing is public record). Turns out he was pederast, which, personal disappointment there.

It seems kind of weird to say this, but it's almost harder to explain why I'm friends with someone that I've known since the third grade. Seventeen years seems like a long time to me, but that's probably just cause it's well over half my life.

I almost feel like there's only a finite number of times a person can come through for you before it just becomes expected. For example, at work a few weeks ago, a story that's far too boring to re-tell happened. I ended up getting bailed out by this guy. It wasn't exactly a shock that he came through, but I sure didn't see it coming.

I guess it just seems like when I turn the tap on my sink, I expect water to come out, if it was eighteen aught two though, people's heads would be exploding if you said you expected that, at some point it just transitioned to the norm.

Pet peeve is probably not the right classification, but, I don't particularly enjoy being judged. I guess the easiest way to accomplish that is to not throw stones myself. I put a lot of value in people taking me as I am, that's probably a common theme among places I frequent.

Anyways, back on topic.

Remember tuesday night wing night? Well that turned into sunday night wing night, which later turned into sunday night grill night. Given that we would be grilling regardless, this was the perfect place to try out the 'za. I had watched a Bobby Flay video about how to grill pizza. His method was to put the crust by itself on the grill for maybe a minute, flip, another minute, then dress the crust, put it on a pan and throw it back on.

I had known from the start that I wanted to do a bacon cheeseburger pizza and a s'mores pizza. For the bacon cheeseburger I made a marinara sauce that was a little heavy on the ketchup. Ground beef on top of that, american cheese on top of that. Then mozz and topped off with bacon. The s'mores pizza was a layer of graham crackers on top of the dough, then a whole jar of nutella on that. I broke up a hershey bar on that then put a whole jar of marshmallow fluff on top. After cooking I took my butane torch and browned any parts of the mellow that didn't look perfect. I learned some things.

Didn't love the american cheese (a thought Rockafeller echoed, he said just go with some montery jack on top). There was also going to be a problem with the beef. Since I wasn't willing to take a chance with any health risks, I had to pre-cook the beef far more than I would have liked. My solution there was just to double up the bacon, cause, that seemed like a good idea. As I mentioned above, I had some issues with the crust. Back in the upper crust days, I could cook a pizza to any point of doneness, because I knew that oven. Without extensive practice, there was just no chance that I'd get to that level with the grill (again, Rockafeller solved that problem).

On the s'mores pizza, as much as nutella is the money spread, it wasn't really what I was looking for. A big part of that is it's hard to spread over graham crackers on a pizza crust. That's the same reason I ended up vetoing the marshmallow fluff.

At the end of the day, after the test run and talking to Rockafeller, I felt comfortable going to the competition.

The Roberts Part of the Story

This was almost called the Roberts and Boyer part of the story. In fact, if you would like to pretend that it says the Roberts and Boyer part of the story, I won't stop you.

Have I talked here before about speech team and the impact it had on my life? I think I might have mentioned it (I realize I could go back and look, but that's just not going to happen, get over it), but I'm not sure I really went into too much detail. Not actually going to go into too much detail here. Suffice to say it had a big impact on my life and while it probably would have regardless, there was two guys who really pushed the experience over the top.

Roberts and Boyer had apparently at some point decided (presumably subconsciously) to make the speech team as fun as possible. You would be hard pressed to find two people who more embodied the concept of doing something for the love of it. Always joking and laughing. Always supporting their teammates as much as possible. I guess my point is this, if you don't bring a dancing santa to the extemp prep room at least one time, you're doing it wrong.

The summer after we graduated Roberts (listen, I don't know the whole story, if the official Bangin' BBQ historian would like to chime in with the correct origin tale, feel free) decided to have a Bangin' BBQ at Fairview Park on the 4th of july and it was indeed bangin'. So we did it again the next year and the next and the next until we had reached year 8 (this year). If I recall correctly (it's entirely possible I don't, I can't actually remember a single thing that happened to me 8 years ago) I went to all of them except the rained out edition that was moved to a garage. Four years ago, the annual cook-off was added. I didn't enter the first three, but number four? I believe the correct terminology is "it was on."

The Actual Cook-Off Part of the Story

Game day. Woke up, cooked the beef and bacon, assembled all my tools, got ice and packed the cooler and it was off to the park.

The cook-off is a pretty free form event, there's no set time that it starts at, judges aren't typically decided ahead of time, shit, there aren't actually any rules (well there's the one: rule one, there are no rules). Award winning photographer and three time cook off participant Tommy tends to have some involved dishes though, so a bit after he starts, other people tend to get going.

There's a secret about me, which is that I don't actually know anything about grilling. I'd really never grilled much before this past year and I'm still in the mode of anytime I do grill, I'm really just making it up as I go. Without much thought, set the grill up, pour in an arbitrary amount of charcoal, light and go. After enough time passed that I assumed the heat was going, I threw the stone on, let it warm up a bit and threw on my calibration pizza. I like to go with pepperoni to get a gauge of my "oven" since it tends to be the easiest pizza to cook. It ended up coming out fine, a little less done than I would have liked, but still good. Happy with that, I made and threw on the bacon cheeseburger pizza.
 
Five minutes later it was burned to a crisp.
 
Shit.
 
Pulled it off, threw that away and went to scrap the residue off my pizza stone. Which caused the stone to break in half.
 
Shit.
 
Luckily I had created a contingency plan for this situation. I got it out and it said:
 
"If shit goes awry, wing it."
 
Alright, I think I can handle that. Pulled the stone off, wrapped it a dozen times in foil and threw it back on. This time I tried to wait for the stone to be more consistently heated so when I threw the calibration pizza on, it would be a more accurate test. Oh and it was money.

Once again confident, I threw the bacon cheeseburger on and IT was money.

S'mores pizza? Were you wondering how it turned out? I think he said something about going to the bank....

That's not quite done there. The original plan called for me to use my torch to brown any parts that weren't quite perfect, but we were wingin' it. Finishing consisted of drizzling chocolate syrup on the s'mores and bbq on the bacon cheeseburger (which you might argue made it a bbq bacon cheeseburger pizza, but it was really just an accent).

I guess the title of this post was a tip off as to what happened next.

Now I have to fly back to stupid bloomington/normal for the stupid fourth of july because I'm contractually obligated to defend my title. There were more people I wanted to mention here, but the writing of this has been dragging on too long (not the length, the fact that this is well over a month in the making). So if you feel like you deserve a thanks, go ahead and pat yourself on the back.

Until next time.